by K.N. Lee
She rode the elevator to the lobby, fishing in her purse for her cell phone. Brown was right — a quick call to Libby at technical support and by noon a courier would be at her apartment dropping off the files so kindly put together for her.
She shoved the revolving door around, watching her phone, waiting for it to turn on. Once out of sight, she’d make the call. But not sooner. Unlike some, she considered it bad taste to go behind her boss’s back while security could see her — even if her boss had told her to do it. Besides, he likely wasn’t the one watching.
The door whirled her out onto the street, and she shuffled away from the entrance while trying not to get swept up in the flow of people.
And there, leaning against the gray concrete wall beside the bay window, stood the man from her apartment building elevator.
9
Rowan blinked. There he was, gorgeous fantasy man, in the flesh. It was too much of a coincidence to see him twice in less than twenty-four hours — figments of her imagination outside the school library not included.
He met her gaze and nodded, a smile playing on his lips.
She wanted to say something witty, but nothing came to mind. All she could think about was why he leaned against the Federal Building.
“Who are you?” she asked.
His smile deepened, and he winked at her. Then he stepped into the flow of people on the sidewalk and eased away.
“Hey.” She jumped in front of a businessman, making him bump into the woman beside him, but didn’t look back to see how they fared. Instead, she kept focused on that black ponytail.
He dipped in front of a group of tall men, all wearing black dress coats, and reappeared behind two schoolgirls. Where had all these people come from? It wasn’t rush hour yet.
She slipped between the woman in front of her and another coming from the other direction. If she could keep him in sight, she’d have him once he stopped — wherever that was. Her only worry was if he hailed a taxi or took the stairs down to the subway. The part of her that demanded rational thought tugged at her, wondering why she even followed him. But her curiosity was louder, desperate to know who he was and why she kept seeing him.
The couple in front of her stepped over to the curb, and she scrambled to take their place before anyone else did. Now only the schoolgirls and a few businessmen separated them.
She ducked around the men and stepped up close behind the girls. If she lunged and reached out, she’d be able to grab his coat, but to what end? Accost him and accuse him of stalking her, or should she take a gentler approach and remark at the strange coincidence of seeing him so many times so recently? But he’d winked at her. Surely that had meant something. She just didn’t know what.
Before she could make up her mind, he stepped out of the crowd and into a store. She stumbled and was jostled by a man from behind. With a muttered apology, she entered the shop.
It was a long and narrow space containing rows of tall shelves stacked with dusty books. Down the center aisle, Elevator Man opened a door at the back and slipped through.
A lanky clerk leaned against the front desk, head down, reading a newspaper. She paused and pointed down the aisle, but he didn’t look up. Well, fine. There wasn’t time for conversation, anyway. If she waited to ask permission, Elevator Man would get away. And now she had to talk to him. The urge was too strong to resist.
She rushed through the back door into a small office with a desk crammed into one corner, the chair in front of it too big for the room. Boxes lined the tight wall in precarious piles and the clock on the coffee machine, which sat on the edge of the desk, flashed a bright 12:00. The man wasn’t there. A heavy steel door took up half the back wall, the light in the emergency exit sign above it blown out.
It occurred to her, as she forced the bar down and leapt out into dazzling sunlight, that this was the second time in two days she’d chased blindly after someone. And this time she wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest.
Her heart pounded, filling her ears with the whoosh of rushing blood. She blinked her vision clear and scanned her surroundings. An alley. The way was paved and graded down to a gutter running along the center.
No one stood in front of her, so she spun around. But no one was behind her either.
She couldn’t fathom where Elevator Man had gone. All of the doors facing the alley were closed and most didn’t have handles. They were just smooth surfaces, some gleaming new, others painted or rusted, standing silent sentinel over the alley.
She turned back into the sun and shaded her eyes with her hands. Somehow, through sheer luck, a break in the skyline permitted the morning’s rays access to the tiny alley. The glow warmed her, bringing a heat to her chest that seeped up her collar to her cheeks and forehead. But it wasn’t the sun that overheated her, only the embarrassment of letting her curiosity make a foolish and dangerous decision… again.
The air whooshed and flared, hot, searing the inside of her nose and mouth.
She undid the top button of her shirt. That was more than the heat of embarrassment.
The sky darkened, a thick cloud gathered and blocked out the sun, and the alley twisted and turned around her. The ache in her chest grew, spreading from her heart down to her abdomen and up to her neck. She struggled to catch her breath.
Gasping, she dropped to her knees and pressed her hands and forehead to the cool pavement. She squeezed her eyes shut and concentrated on tactile things: the uneven pavement, the rock digging into her right knee, the hint of dampness and chill in the air.
Another gasping breath squeezed past the agony in her chest.
Her mind whirled. She didn’t know what was wrong. It felt like she’d been shot all over again, but there wasn’t anyone around and the air still burned down her throat.
Focus. Slow it down. She drew another breath.
The searing heat and pain eased.
Another breath.
Her racing heart slowed.
That’s it. Just focus.
She dug her palms into the asphalt and drew another, slower breath. The pain fluttered then ebbed, seeping away like a slow fog melting back into the ground.
She opened her eyes. Through the triangle between her arm and the ground was the crumbling brick wall of the building beside her. Her vision appeared normal and the wave of dizziness and sudden racing heart had passed, but now a cold fear sat heavy in her gut.
The shock of being shot must have taken more of a toll than she’d anticipated. Of course, how could she have anticipated she’d have a meltdown in the middle of an alley? How could she have anticipated any kind of reaction to being shot? She’d never in her wildest fears thought she’d be shot. A part of her knew she should be grateful to Brown’s boss for forcing her away from the office. Imagine the horror and embarrassment of having had that meltdown at work.
She stood on shaky legs and brushed the dirt from her shins. It was time to go home. Whoever the fantasy man was, he was just going to have to stay a mystery. She’d call Libby from there and wait for the files.
Thank God no one had witnessed that, but her relief at that thought didn’t ease the fear. She headed down the alley with slow steps, afraid the dizziness would strike again. The passage ended at a side street lined with high rises. Beside her sat the door for a tiny boutique, the sign creaking in the breeze.
The sun hid behind thick clouds and the wind picked up, scattering leaves and newspapers. She hugged herself. It seemed colder than when she’d left her apartment that morning. Was this finally the onset of fall temperatures?
In the display window of the boutique, mannequins clad in fantastic costumes made of leather, velvet, and chain stood behind the glass. She wasn’t certain who the characters were supposed to portray, but that was probably because she was out of touch with popular culture. Halloween was a month and a half away, but from last year, she knew the city enjoyed the celebration. It had a connection with North American witchcraft and the witch trials — although nothing lik
e that of nearby Salem — and tourists were drawn to the area in September and October.
Picking up her stride, she walked to the main street and merged with the flow of people heading toward the subway. Ahead of her, an enormous man shoved through the crowd. He towered head and shoulders over most of the people and was twice as broad as anyone else.
He jostled a couple with matching pink hair. Both turned and glared at him but fell silent when they saw who’d bumped them. And rightly so. She wouldn’t argue with someone that size. He was probably a football player or something.
Movement above caught her eye. The sky was empty, packed with heavy gray clouds that threatened rain. High rises towered above, many with gothic ornamentation she’d never noticed before. Although in retrospect, she hadn’t spent a lot of time staring up at the buildings. Heavy granite gargoyles sat overhead of the canopies and on ledges a few stories up. If she squinted, she could see dark specks way up top, staring down as well.
It seemed, as she walked to the subway and rode it home, that the streets were more culturally diverse than usual. There were more people of various sizes and skin colors, and more colors and variety in clothing than the usual dark-suited group of men who made up the bulk of the morning commuters. Or perhaps her scare in the alley and the one yesterday afternoon had made her more aware.
She’d heard somewhere that a brush with death could heighten a person’s awareness. She just would have thought she’d have noticed the difference when she’d woken in the hospital yesterday afternoon. Of course, maybe she had still been in shock then.
She arrived at her building and opened the front door. It seemed bigger, wider and taller, and the lobby felt more expansive than before. It was just as empty, with the plastic plant leaning in the corner, but somehow it seemed… more. The elevator also felt more spacious, but she shrugged it all off as heightened awareness, or shock, or something.
Entering her apartment, she dropped her keys in the dish and kicked off her shoes.
“You’re home,” Sister Joe said. She sounded surprised. She stood at the back of the living room by the balcony doors, holding a squirt bottle poised above a squat bonsai that sat on the edge of Rowan’s rickety bookshelf. “I didn’t expect you back so soon.”
Something wasn’t right. She just couldn’t figure out what.
“Well, I—”
She couldn’t understand what Joe was doing in her apartment, aside from watering the plant. Maybe Ben had called her. But then where was Ben?
“When did I get a plant?”
10
“I gave you the bonsai last Christmas,” Sister Josephine said, the squirt bottle’s nozzle dipping from the plant and threatening the books on Rowan’s bookcase below.
No, she hadn’t. It had been…
What had it been?
Rowan strained, but couldn’t bring it to mind. Amnesia didn’t result from a gunshot to the chest, but it could come from post-traumatic stress. But that was amnesia of the event, not personal details, wasn’t it?
Funny how she could remember that but not what Joe had given her for Christmas. Why couldn’t she make her mind work?
She shuffled to the bookcase to get a better look at the bonsai. “Did Ben go out?”
“Who?”
“Ben.” Her fiancé. The one who’d traveled from Toronto just to visit. That Ben. She let her gaze wander from the bonsai to the shelf packed with familiar texts. But they were organized wrong. Usually, her small collection of psychology and sociology books sat at the bottom right, crammed to the side by religious studies. But now they held a prominent location on the second shelf down and filled the entire row.
“Are you sure you’re feeling all right?”
“Yes. No.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She squatted and read the spines. Some were old, the leather binding worn and cracked with just the hint of gold lettering. Most were a mix of hard- and soft-covered textbooks, but of topics she didn’t recognize.
In amongst the psychology and sociology were books on entity criminal profiling, entity psychological makeup, and entity social conventions. The top shelf contained her mythology books, but these too were interspersed with strange titles. She tipped out a book called The Modern Greek God, wondering what a modern Greek god was and if he looked anything like the man from her apartment elevator.
The door opened. She jumped and spun around, clutching the book to her chest.
“Pack it up, we’re heading—” A small, compact man froze in the doorway. He pushed thick round lenses up the bridge of his nose, and his eyes narrowed. “Hill?”
“Ro?” Shannon poked his head into the doorway.
Except it wasn’t her co-worker. At first glance he looked like Richard Shannon, but everything about him was wrong. He was too… confident.
And he’d called her Ro.
Pushing past the small man, he bounded across the room in three long strides, picked her up, and planted a heavy kiss on her lips.
“I knew you wouldn’t be laid up for long.” He set her back on her feet but kept his arms around her.
She couldn’t keep her thoughts straight, and if he let go, she was sure she’d fall over from shock. If it hadn’t been Shannon, she’d have said the kiss had befuddled her — well, actually, Grandma Ro would say befuddled. Rowan wasn’t sure what she’d say, but it likely would have involved swearing.
The man looked like Shannon, brush cut, muscles, tan, everything. He seemed taller and broader across the shoulders, but she couldn’t remember having ever been so close to him before. The man she remembered also had a way of making himself seem smaller, less noticeable, and he hadn’t been this happy to see her at the office half an hour ago.
She pushed back, and he released his embrace but kept one arm around her waist.
“Stop mauling the profiler, Shannon,” the small man said. He turned his myopic gaze to Joe. “It looks like we don’t need you after all, Sister.”
“All the better, Agent Jovkovic,” she said. “Not my line of work.”
The small man — Agent Jovkovic — tugged at his jacket. It didn’t need adjustment. Nothing about him did. His thinning hair was too short to be out of place, and his collar was so stiff it had to have been starched. “Come on. Time’s wasting.”
Shannon led her to the door but she hesitated. He let go at her resistance and stepped into the hall.
“I’ll lock up,” Joe said.
She nodded, but it wasn’t leaving Joe in her apartment that bothered her.
Nothing was right.
Nothing was really wrong, either. At least she didn’t think anything was wrong. She couldn’t find the words to articulate how she felt.
“Come on, Hill,” Jovkovic said. “I haven’t got all day.”
“Of course.” She slipped on her shoes and grabbed her keys and purse. “Where are we going?”
Side by side, Jovkovic seemed even smaller and Shannon even bigger than she’d first thought. The neon light in the hallway did little to make Shannon look more like himself. His hair was darker, almost black from its usual brown with natural blond highlights, and his tanned complexion was ashen.
“We’ve got another missing demon,” Shannon said.
“Entity,” Jovkovic said over his shoulder.
“Another?” A what? Demon? Entity? She could not have heard that right.
“That makes two from the most prominent dynasties in North America,” Shannon said without reaction to Jovkovic’s obvious correction.
They stopped at the elevator. Jovkovic hit the call button while Shannon snaked his arm behind Rowan’s waist and pulled her close.
She pressed her hands against his chest to keep her balance and felt hard chiseled muscle flex under her fingers. Warmth spread through her. She bet he’d feel even better without his shirt in the way.
Jeez. One brush with death and she was attracted to every guy she came across. Of course, that wasn’t true. There’d been plenty of strangers on the street all
morning who she hadn’t given a second look. It was only Ben, Elevator Man, and now Shannon who made her stomach — and lower — tighten with anticipation. She certainly wasn’t attracted to Jovkovic.
As for Shannon… he wasn’t sexy. Really… Well, that wasn’t exactly true, either. She’d always thought he was a well-built, handsome man. He’d just never given her reason to think of him that way.
And while thoughts were all well and good, actions were what mattered, and Ben was the only one she’d promised to take action with.
She eased out of Shannon’s embrace and struggled to get a grip on the situation. Logically, nothing made sense. Shannon had grown a foot, added muscle, and had a personality change. She didn’t know where Brown was, or who Agent Jovkovic was.
And where was Ben?
Joe had acted as if she’d never heard of him, but they had spent hours over steaming cups of tea discussing her engagement. The only explanation was that she was still in the alley after having chased Mysterious Elevator Man, unconscious, and having a bad dream.
She pinched her wrist.
Nothing happened.
The elevator doors opened and they stepped in.
She closed her eyes and pinched again.
Still no sense that her surroundings had changed or that she’d even woken up.
She cracked open one eye. Yep, still crammed into the elevator with the other-Shannon and Jovkovic. This — whatever this was — was not good.
11
Jovkovic slid his beady gaze at her and studied her through his thick glasses. “You’re awfully quiet, Hill.”
The elevator doors slid open, revealing the lobby of Rowan’s apartment building. Jovkovic strode to the front door, hit his car remote, and the lights flashed on a black SUV parked straight ahead on the street.